Global climate change toward greater aridity and the ever-increased population pose a challenge to enhance wheat productivity.  Developing drought-tolerant wheat cultivars with enhancing yields is essential to assure food security.  In the Middle East region, wheat is the most important grain crop.  Wild emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccoides), the progenitor of all domesticated wheats, harbor a wide genetic diversity for agronomically important traits including drought resistance. The high genetic similarity with durum wheat enables fast and easy transfer of gene to improve the domesticated forms. 

      The WheatME project aims to improve drought and heat tolerance in durum wheat, by exploiting the available genetic diversity in the wild relatives. A large mapping population derived from a cross between elite durum wheat cultivar and highly drought tolerant wild emmer accession was developed. We will characterize this population in the target region (Israel, and Jordan) for yield and morpho-physiological traits contributing to heat and drought tolerance. Using the high-density genetic map already available, we will map the genomic region associated with improved productivity under water deficit. This information will be used for the introgression of genomic regions containing drought resistance genes/QTL from the wild into high yielding elite Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian recipient's cultivars for the establishment of improved cultivars with high yield under heat and drought conditions.

The WheatME core-collection  

The Svevo X Zavitan RIL population